After the First Death
by 7types
Summary: Snape and Tonks are left behind for a while.


**After the First Death**

Tonks was at the train station again. This time it was a narrow concrete platform, out in the middle of the tall grass that, beaten down by the rain, stretched in shining waves in all directions.

The last time, she had gone to see off Remus. He had waved to her from the window of the Hogwarts Express, his face aglow with excitement. It was the first day of the future, where friendships would truly last forever, and endless adventures and scrapes would end in them coming home, tired but happy. Next to Remus, James and Sirius were already talking excitedly, hatching some wild scheme.

This time, there was no one she knew there. She waited for a while, then walked home, the muddy water slopping over her red-yellow-and-green rainboots.

One look at Severus told her it had not been a good day for him either. He was wearing his muffler, and his face was almost grey in the rain-inflected light. He turned around and watched as she clattered around the hallway, shedding boots and anorak, and wrestling her umbrella into submission, firmly jamming it into the troll's leg umbrella stand. There was not much new where they lived; mostly, assorted flotsam drifted from the shipwrecks of their collective lives. The kitchen, to Severus' disgust, was mostly from Spinner's End, with a huge black Hogwarts range towering among the chipped Formica and peeling lino.

"No one we know today," Tonks said. The thin sound of the boiling kettle came from the kitchen. "Oh good. You've put on the tea."

"The Shrieking Shack turned up today. It's out back now, instead of the shed." His voice was creaky and barely there. Tonks leaned over and took a closer look at him. There was a strip of white bandage showing where the muffler had slipped. Shit. Shitshitshit. He hadn't needed the bandages since he had first shown up at the station.

Tonks straightened back up and headed for the kitchen. There was, as always, tea in the battered old tin; Lapsang Souchong, today, smelling of smoke and pitch. She looked out of the tiny window – yes, there it was, the Shrieking Shack, looming in the tall weeds. They had considered planting vegetables, but could think of none that would grow in the perpetual rain. She made the tea and brought it back into the room.

"Did you ever go to the station to look for, you know… to look for her?" Tonks asked.

Snape shook his head. "I doubt she would have been there. And if she had, it wouldn't be me she was waiting for. What could I say to her, now? All the conversations one rehearses in one's mind – they never do happen, do they."

"No," Tonks said slowly. "No, I don't suppose they do. But didn't you at least want to try? After all this time?"

"I loved her. I learned a long time ago, though, that it's no good grabbing at happiness - lord knows, I tried. Maybe if I'd tried harder, it _would_ be Lily sitting here, but I doubt very much either of us would be happy."

She set down her teacup and stretched. "I think you're right, Severus. Getting what you want, it's not all that. I should know, shouldn't I."

Snape looked up. "I thought Lupin… "

"Oh, he was fond of me, alright, in a vague sort of way. I thought I could make him happy and he'd love me. Did you know he tried to leave when we found out I was pregnant? And, no, before you even ask – it wasn't on purpose to trap him. I mean, they feed us all this tripe about believing yourself and following your _heaaaaart_ and then you end up with someone who's only with you because there isn't anything else."

"Well, me following my heart didn't exactly lead to anything good either. Though, according to Dumbledore, this sort of thing happens only if you have the wrong sort of heart."

"Well, _shit_."

He sniggered. "I think I'll go out back and see that Shack. If it is here for a reason, I want to find out now, not when it's too late."

Tonks followed him through the waist-high grass in the backyard. The rainy wind on her face felt like being slapped with a wet towel. From outside, the Shack was taller than their house. It seemed out of place, as if a stray hurricane had picked it up and dropped it from the sky. The door swung creakily back and forth, in the approved way of all haunted houses in all horror movies ever. Of course, in a horror movie, there would be an audience screaming, Don't go in there! And where were all of you the first two times he went in there, when a warning might have done some good, she thought, suddenly angry. Too late now, isn't it now.

Inside, it was quiet. She'd half expected to see Voldemort emerge from a dark corner, or (worse) to hear the rasping of monstrous claws on the rotting wood. But she could tell immediately that the silence was the sort you got in a building that has been completely empty for a long, long time.

Ahead of her, Snape bent down and picked something up. "I must have dropped this here," he said, sliding whatever it was into his pocket.

From the open door ahead of them, dusty grey light spilled out into the hallway. Snape looked into the room, then turned around and headed towards the stairs. His face was carefully blank. Tonks stuck her head through the doorway. The blood on the walls and floor had been there for quite a while. The window looked out onto grey sky and nothing else, as far as she could see. She followed Snape up the stairs, making sure to avoid the gaping cracks in the treads.

Upstairs, they saw sunlight for the first time in years.

They sat together on the warm red shingles. At some point, his hand had twined around hers. All around them, blue-green water stretched as far as the horizon. Sometimes Tonks thought she could make out dark shapes and movement down below. It went unspoken that going back down through the trapdoor was out of the question, even before the water had risen and covered it.

"If you were stuck on a desert island," she asked, "what would be the three things you would miss most?"

He smiled (had she ever seen him do that before?) and lifted his hand to shield his eyes as he looked into the distance.

"I don't believe I would," he said obscurely. He stood up, pulled the wad of old bandages out of his pocket, and dropped them on the shingles. Tonks leaned forward and stared into the direction he'd been looking before. The glare made it hard to tell, but she thought she saw something moving near the horizon.

"I think something's coming," she said.

"It's about time." His hand came out of his pocket again, clenched around something she couldn't see – the thing he'd picked up downstairs. He swung his arm back and then whatever-it-was was flying through the air, catching and refracting the sunlight as it went, then hitting the water and plummeting towards the dark shapes far, far below. She moved to stand next to him and felt his arm wrap around her waist, hesitantly at first. Over the gleaming waters, something moved steadily towards them, something white and glorious and shining, like a sail, or the steam of the Hogwarts Express as it escaped from the tunnel and into the brightness of an infinite September day.


End file.
